


Entangled

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Just the fluffiest fluff, Relationship Can Be Read As Either/Or, Spoilers for Episode 80 of Campaign 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 04:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Jester teaches Caleb a thing or two about Cat's Cradle.





	Entangled

_“_Jester?_”_

Jester looks up from her drawing when she hears Caleb’s voice whispering in her ear. She’s alone in the room all the girls are sharing, Beau training with Fjord somewhere and Nott having gone off to buy more supplies to make acid at the town’s only alchemist. Jester had thought about going with Nott but had decided in the end to stay behind. She loves her friends to pieces, she truly does, but they’ve been traveling together in very close quarters for almost a week on the road to Zadash, and she likes a little private time sometimes, just a little.

“Caleb?” Jester asks out loud to the empty room, trusting his magic to carry the words back to him. “What’s up?”

“Could you—ahh— come to my room please? I am afraid I am in— something of a predicament.”

Jester’s tail waves back and forth. “Ooo, Caleb, is it a _sexy_ predicament?”

“Jester.”

“I’m just _saying_ Caleb, you never did answer me when I asked if you were secretly in love with me. I mean, you gave me a _look_ but that could have meant anything!”

“_Jester, please.”_ Caleb’s voice sounds strained as Jester gets to her feet.

“Okay, okay, okay, I’m coming.” She tucks her sketchbook away and walks down the hall to Caleb’s room, only to find the door locked. “Caleb? Can you unlock the door? Or is that part of the problem?”

Jester hears Caleb groan faintly from the inside of the room. “Damn it. Can you just— teleport in? I think the doorknob is a bit beyond me at the moment.”

“Oh sure.” She visualizes the inside of Caleb’s room, trusting that it’s similar to her own, says a word, and takes a step forward. There’s the briefest moment of vertigo and then she’s standing on the other side of the door, as easy as anything.

Caleb looks over from where he is sitting on the bed, his hands clasped in front of him. No, not clasped, she can see the glitter of his silver thread wound around his fingers and palms in the lantern’s light.

“Caleb! You’re not supposed to practice bondage on yourself without someone in the room with you!”

Caleb’s face flushes so fast it’s as if Jester threw a pot of red ink onto him. “I was not— it was for a spell! I did not expect to become trapped, as it were.”

“Well still,” Jester says as she walks towards Caleb, fishing a small pair of sewing scissors out of her dress pocket. “Can I cut it or will that do something bad to the magic?”

“It was not magic yet,” Caleb tells her. “It was only for practice. Go ahead.”

Jester snips the thread in several places and Caleb pulls his hands free with a sigh of relief. “Thank you. It was getting a little bit painful there,” he says as he rubs at his fingers.

“You’re welcome.” Jester tucks the scissors away and reaches for the scraps of thread. “What were you trying to do?”

Caleb’s eyes light up in that way they do when he’s about to start talking about something he loves, like books or magic or cats. “I am trying to create a spell,” he tells her, gesturing with his hands at the same time. “A web of fire that would crawl along the ground and burn our enemies. _Just_ our enemies,” he emphasizes, and she watches as that light in his eyes starts to dim a little, as his hands tremble just the tiniest bit.

“That sounds really cool, Caleb!” She speaks just a little louder than she normally would, and watches him blink and come back from whatever bad place in his head he had been slipping into. She doesn’t just say it to cheer him up either, it _does_ sound cool. Jester doesn’t know spells until the Traveler teaches them to her, but Caleb can create spells and teach them to _himself, _and that really is kind of great. “So what happened that you got all tied up?”

“Oh, well, a spell with that much power needs some sort of material focus,” Caleb explains. “Something that resonates with what you are trying to accomplish. An intact spider’s web would _probably_ work, but would be extremely tricky to carry around. So I thought, well, something that _looked_ like a web while also incorporating the finger motions that would be required would be a cat’s cradle. Except, well, you see how that ended up.” He frowns at the bits of thread in Jester’s hand. “It is something I have only ever _seen_ done and it was—well, a very long time ago. I don’t suppose you know how to—“

Jester’s tail thrashes excitedly as she rummages through her dress pockets. “I can do cat’s cradle, sure! Momma and I would do it together sometimes, when she wasn’t busy, but there’s a bunch of figures you can do just by yourself. You have to start with a really long piece of string though, I think that was part of your problem. Also string might be easier to use than thread just in general. Easier to get your fingers under.” She pulls out a small ball of red string and measures out a very long strand before snipping it and tying the ends together.

“Now, hold your hands up like this.” Jester holds her own hands a ways apart to demonstrate her palms facing each other. When Caleb mirrors the action, she loops the string around the back of his hands. “Okay now—hmmm.” She tilts her head, considering. “Can I sit behind you? When Momma was teaching me, she sat behind me and moved my hands while she taught me the steps. Is that okay?” If this had been Beau or Caduceus she might not have asked, probably would have just draped herself over their shoulders and jumped right in. But this is Caleb, and even though he’s less skittish than he used to be, she’s seen how he’ll sometimes still flinch from unexpected contact, no matter how friendly.

Caleb nods slowly. “Ja, that’s—fine.”

Jester, already climbing up onto the bed, pauses at Caleb’s hesitation. “Are you sure? We could try it another way.”

Caleb shakes his head. “No, really it is fine. I was just— thank you for asking first.”

“Oh, no problem.” Jester presses herself Caleb’s back and looks over his shoulder as she fits her hands around his. This close she can clearly see the scars on his forearms and wrists and oh, how she hopes that the man who did that to him meets a horrible end. “Now, you just rotate your wrists like this, so the string loops around both your wrists. And then you take your middle fingers—“

Caleb chuckles softly. “Specifically the middle ones? That seems appropriate considering what I’ll be using this for.”

Jester giggles. “It is! Now pay attention! You take your middle fingers and put them under the strands on your opposite wrists and then pull your hands apart like this, and ta da! Cat’s cradle!”

Caleb stares down at his hands and the crossed string between them. “Show me one more time?”

Jester does, then claps when Caleb does it all by himself, and rather quickly at that.

“Thank you, Jester,” Caleb says, and even though Jester isn’t looking at his face directly she can hear the smile in his voice. ”That was a lot easier than what I was trying to do before.” Caleb says. “What I saw when I was younger looked a little more— complex.”

“Well, there’s a lot of different shapes you can do if you have more than one person,” Jester says. “I mean, there’s a bunch you can do by yourself too, like the Winking Eye or the Turtle or the Courtesan’s Bed or the Traveler’s Archway. The Traveler taught me that one, obviously.”

Caleb nods. “Obviously.” He turns his head slightly to look at her. “Would you— teach me some of those? If you have the time, that is. I like having something to do with my hands.”

Jester has seen how Caleb fidgets, how he pets Frumpkin, or plays with the ends of his sleeves, or when he’s terribly stressed how he scratches at the scars on his arms. “Sure! I’d love to!” She puts his hands on his again. “Now this one is called Cat’s Eye…”

——————

Caduceus is deep in meditation in the woods just outside of town when Jester’s voice, bubbly and just a touch panicked penetrates his inner calm.

“Caduceus, can you come to the inn? Caleb and I were trying to do Two Dolphins Swimming and Caleb moved wrong and now we’re stuck.”

Caduceus blinks slowly, turning the words over in his mind for a moment to see if he can get any more sense out of them before he answers. “Is this a sex thing? Because I’m not sure I have any idea how to help with that if it is.”

“It is very much not a sex thing, I promise,” Jester assures him. “Though my Momma _did _tellme about a technique called Two Dolphins Encircling The Swollen—“

The message cuts off, which is just as well. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Caduceus promises, and is almost relieved when he doesn’t get a reply back.

———————

Weeks later, when the Nein are inside The Happy Fun Ball, (which has another name it turns out, but Jester likes Twiggy’s name for it better) and fighting one super huge frog monster and some smaller, regular sized frog monsters, Caleb will reach into his bag and pull out a looped, red string coated in phosphorous. His hands will be shaking and his face will be the picture of anxiety, but still he will catch Jester’s eye for a moment and wink. Jester, worried about her swallowed friends, will feel her spirits lift just a little as she winks back.

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 80 was *just* what we needed for an episode, or at least what *I* needed for an episode after a very long week. It's funny what my brain will focus on, because as soon as Caleb said Cat's Cradle, I imagined him and Jester playing it together and getting tangled up, which lead to this fic!
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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